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We the People Should Own AI! · We Can Do Better

• Fran Quigley: Welcome to We Can Do Better, a podcast about ending poverty in our time. My name's Fran Quigley, I'm a law professor. I go with my students and colleagues every week to eviction court. There we represent some of the millions of people in this country who are facing the loss of their homes, who are skipping filling prescriptions, and people who are even going hungry despite living in the richest nation in the world. We can do better. This week we welcome Matt Brunig, who I consider to be one of the most important and solutions focused voices in our nation on exactly what this podcast is about issues of poverty and inequality. Matt is the founder and the president of the People's Policy Project. He's a lawyer. He's worked previously previously at the National Labor Relations Board and is a policy analyst at Demos Think Tank. Matt, welcome to We Can Do Better. Matt Bruenig: Thanks for having me. Fran Quigley: Well, as I said, I'm a big, big fan of your work over the years, especially on welfare state analysis, welfare state proposals. And I, for one, would sign up for a multi-hour seminar on all things Matt Brunig research over the years. But but today we want to focus on one specific path to we can do better on addressing poverty and inequality, and that is sovereign wealth funds and or state-owned enterprises. And we'll talk a little bit about have you explain the difference between the two. But the context here is that the most recent context at least is that a couple of months ago you wrote an article, which we'll link to in the show notes about Senator Bernie Sanders' proposal to force AI companies, artificial intelligence providers, to hand over fifty percent of their stock to a government-run sovereign wealth fund. So This made a lot of news and your analysis has been and widely shared and discussed. But before we talk about that, I want to start with a bit wider lens because this is not a new topic for you. A few Matt Bruenig: Mm-hmm. Fran Quigley: years ago, you and People's Policy Project proposed what you call a social wealth fund for America. We'll put a link to in our show notes to the white paper description of the proposal. But can you tell us a little bit about what that proposal was? what examples you draw from and and then I obviously I think that'll lead to a discussion of what Bernie's proposing. Matt Bruenig: Yeah, so the proposal is pretty simple ultimately, and that is to create a fund, not unlike a pension fund, or you could even think about your own four one K or IRA if you have such a thing, or five twenty nine. And you build a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds and real estate and other things that are in the kind of normal investable universe. but rather than having an individual own this fund or you know, a set of retirees own the fund, you know, or or whatever, the beneficiaries would be everyone in the country. So you would essentially give one share of ownership to the fund of the fund to everyone in the country. And then as the fund grows, you know, essentially the value of your share grows, but more importantly, the value of your dividend grows. So every year you would receive a dividend based on the return of the fund. And this is almost entirely copycat version of what exists in Alaska today. The Alaska Permanent Fund has been around for I think forty years now. And if you were to add it up, every Alaskan has somewhere around two hundred thousand dollars worth of assets in the fund that they effectively own as residents, and they receive dividends each year, could be as high as three, four thousand dollars a year per person. So a family of four would would just get a big fat check of sixteen thousand dollars when when permanent fund dividend time rolled around. Fran Quigley: And and again, just to the context of what we see of folks losing their homes, which of course overlaps with people struggling with health care and other needs, sixteen thousand dollars would absolutely keep almost everybody we see housed. they they would be housed, the kids would be fed, transportation, childcare. that would be huge. so Al Alaska is the kind of one of the domestic examples, and and we actually had on the show about a month or two ago. someone talking about the New Mexico Child Care Assistance, Universal Child Care Assistance Program, Universal Child Care Program, that's funded by their sovereign wealth fund. So Alaska is the largest, I think, and definitely most well known. But there's other states in the United States have sovereign wealth funds as well, right? Matt Bruenig: Correct. Yes. you actually see this a lot with land grant colleges as well. It's essentially a version of that. where I'm from, Texas, the University of Texas and Texas AM have these essentially sovereign wealth funds or so social wealth funds. I don't know if they're all still in land now or some of that land was sold and invested in other assets. and in a way you could think about any university endowment kind of functions this way as well, right? So there are The sort of structure of a fund that puts off money that you can use for social purposes, whether it's childcare or education, that exists in a lot of places. The one where you get a direct dividend only exists in Alaska as far as as far as I'm aware. Fran Quigley: Okay. And and those are some of the domestic examples, but you also write in your proposal, I think you call it Norway's triumph, Matt Bruenig: Yeah. Fran Quigley: in social wealth funds and and state owned enterprises. So what's Norway doing that's that's making things different there? Matt Bruenig: Well what's what's interesting is you know, there's if you're if you come from a kind of socialist perspective, you know, socialists are very fixated on capital ownership, you know, that's it's the wealth of the of a country or society and a capitalist society usually gets owned very concentratedly. You know, the top ten percent will own seventy-five, eighty percent of the wealth and the bottom half will own approximately nothing. And you know, if your socialists you have issues with this. And so there was there's always kind of a question of, so what do you want to do about it? You know, and like you could say, well, socialism, but but what what? Like what what does that mean? and so Sweden had this plan in the 70s called the Meidner Plan. And it was essentially a version of the Social Wealth Fund plan, and they were going to basically require companies to issue shares directly to these wage earner funds. And over the course of twenty five or thirty years the share issuances would dilute out existing owners and these funds would come to own like fifty one percent of all the corporations in Sweden. and so that's like It's a thing that I don't know, it seems to looms l loom large in a certain sort of market socialist niche, which is gr you know, admittedly kind of a small thing. But if you're in this world, the Meidner plan, the Meitner plan, the Meitner plan, and the failed Meidner plan. And Meidner ended up writing a an an article in a journal that said why the Meidner plan failed and whatever. Like it was a whole like what a great hope we once had. And so the reason I labeled that Norway's Triumph is because right before that I go through Sweden's failure. Fran Quigley: Okay. Matt Bruenig: And part of what I'm trying to do there is say, you guys, I talk to all these market socialists all the time and they're telling me about the Meidner plan and they have these tears. It's like it's almost like the it's like it's almost like Southerners who kinda have like the lost cause you know, thing about Fran Quigley: Mm-hmm. Matt Bruenig: the civil war. Like you run into people like that and you know, the and I try to be like, guys, it that you're the thing you dreamed of, it exists in Norway. Like they they did it over there. It's just we have it it happened in a very pragmatic, practical way, not, you know, because of a Marxist economist working in the trade unions, you know. But it just occurred because in Norway they discovered oil in the North Sea. And immediately the government nationalized this oil and said, look, this belongs to everyone. and initially for a few years there were some foreign oil companies that would extract it, but They're under the agreement that they would essentially teach Norway how to do this. So then Norway sets up its own state-owned oil company. And so you have state-owned oil, state-owned oil company, and the profits from all that flow into a fund. And they don't spend it immediately. They use it to invest in assets. And that fund has become, especially on like a per capita basis, the biggest in the world. just a massive, massive fund. and each year they take, I think it was like three or four percent of the value of the fund comes out of it. That's sort of like their projected rate of return. And that helps fund general government and their welfare state. But like when you really start adding it up, and this is kind of what I did in the paper, which I hadn't seen before, it's just shocking the amount of like in the paper, I think I say fifty-nine percent of all Norwegian wealth is owned by the government. through these funds. And if you exclude homes, because they they have private ownership of homes, it's like 76%. Fran Quigley: Wow. Matt Bruenig: So I mean, you know, it's not quite I like I don't know at what point you want to call this socialist or whatever, but like the capital ownership in Norway is r radically collectivized Fran Quigley: Yeah. Matt Bruenig: into this fund. and, you know, I think that tends to be pretty Pretty good. You know, I mean the thing about it, which I like about it, I mean, obviously I like the outcome, but it's a proof of concept, right? There's this there's some notion out there that like, okay, sure, yeah, the state's gonna own it and then what? They'll miss management, it'll be so impossible, you start owning that much, et cetera, et cetera. And you can look at it and say, No, I mean, you know, the socialists were kinda right in some way that owning capital is not that hard. Like it's really not that difficult. Fran Quigley: Great. Yeah. Matt Bruenig: and so whereas working is difficult, you know, so Fran Quigley: Well, and you written about and your others at People's Policy Project have written about the Nordic countries and their social welfare success, right? I mean, so I assume that's very much tied to the fact that the fact that they do have better child care access, that they do have better access to affordable housing and and income supports, etcetera. That's tied into the fact that that these the the social welfare fund is so large and and so robust. Is that correct? Matt Bruenig: well in in Norway, I I the thing is it's funny, you know, they don't all have oil. They do all have except for Denmark, they they have pretty elevated levels of state ownership. and so that might help to some degree because that's a revenue driver. but even in Denmark, you know, they have a pretty good welfare state. To I always kind of boil down the Nordic sort of egalitarian success to three things. You've got a highly organized labor market. So you the almost everyone in these countries is represented by a union and the unions negotiate on a sector level. so basically, you know, effectively 100% union density in these countries. that does a few things. it makes sure that wages, you know, the the share of revenue that goes to wages is is somewhat higher, or so less going to to capital, which does tend to be more concentratedly owned. And then it also more importantly, it compresses wages. Because these sector unions negotiate collectively and and often kind of across the whole economy at the same time. they can negotiate in ways where they say, Hey, you know, this year let's have the engineers get like a two percent raise while we'll have the childcare workers get a five percent raise. And this is called solidaristic wage setting. And so over time they kind of come have compressed. the wage differences. And so they have a much you know, narrower band of of salaries. the second thing is the universal welfare state that they have, which is unique in in part because it it really to the to with some exceptions, they have some benefits that are more means tested, but for the most part they have a kind of a different vision for the welfare state than we tend to have in the US or even in the UK or Australia or Canada, which tends to be from a different welfare tradition, which really focuses on, you know, helping the poor get up, you know, to subsistence level there. It's kind of like everyone gets the benefit if they are in the relevant benefit category. So if you're unemployed, you're going to get unemployment benefits. And then it doesn't matter if you're rich, poor, whatever, the issue is you're you're unemployed. You know, if you're if you're old, you get your old age benefits. If you're disabled, you get your disability benefits. And probably the most glaring difference between there and here is child benefits. You know, children get a whole suite of benefits there, and there's never any notion of how much money do your parents make. so you'll get free health care. I mean ever everyone gets public health care, but they they actually have like extra health care for kids. So like the dental is also free and whatever, you know. and they'll have you get a check every month for each kid that you have, you get essentially free child care, the school lunches are free, you know, a year of paid leave, et cetera. And it's it's for everyone. Like you you need you know, it doesn't matter rich poor. so you've got the solidaristic union wage setting, you've got the universal welfare state, and then I would say the the public ownership helps cut down on inequality that's driven by capital ownership. So those those are the three ingredients in my my mind. Fran Quigley: great. I want to commend to listeners on factor number two of the universal welfare state and especially the benefits to kids. I think the name is the Family Fund Pack. Is that right? That People's Policy Project has addressed the idea that, this is a utopia, this can't possibly happen. And you've actually proposed here exactly is how it could happen in the United States. So it might do I have the name right, is a family fund pack? Matt Bruenig: Yes. The family fund pack yes is is sort of an basically me adopting really kind of the Finnish family benefit system to the US context. So, you know, you have to make certain changes because we do have certain benefits already and whatever. So there's some modifications. And more recently, we actually published a paper called the US Nordic Childcare Gap that just compares the US and Nordic childcare systems. So that that that's a pretty good one as well. Fran Quigley: Okay. Okay. so we've talked a little bit about Alaska, we've talked a little bit about Norway, and and they're definitely not the only states and the only nations that have social welfare funds or sovereign wealth funds, whatever you want to call them. but how do those examples how how do they inform the Sanders proposal? I guess I should maybe I should take a half step back. I don't think we've talked about what the Sanders proposal is. So So what does Bernie Sanders propose? 'Cause there's there is now legislation introduced to do this, right? It's not just a an idea and an op ed or anything. Matt Bruenig: Yeah, so Sanders has been very active on AI. so there there's just a lot of stuff coming out of the Bernie Sanders shop, a policy shop around AI. Some of it might be pausing data center construction, some of it is, you know, trying to r regulate the safety issues, pause and maybe frontier AI development. There's just a lot of stuff. but one piece of the puzzle. aside from kind of like safety and rate of progress and things like that, is also who gains, who benefits? What are we gonna, you know, if this is gonna unleash a lot of new growth and but also be disruptive in certain ways, right? It's gonna change the way the economy works. Who's gonna benefit from the growth? How are we gonna protect people who you know are disrupted? And one possible approach to that would be to say, Let's have the government build a social wealth fund starting with equity stakes in these AI companies. and if AI really turns out to be what people think it's gonna be, these companies could become very, very large and the government's equity stakes would become very, very big. Those equity stakes then enable you to do any number of things, including funding unemployment benefits, other kinds of assistance in reallocating people across the economy. Right. So, and that's that's essentially his proposal. So concretely, what he proposes is to have the main AI companies in in practice, he's talking about open AI anthropic, and then they would require Google to spin off Gemini into a Fran Quigley: Yeah. Matt Bruenig: separate company. And then you would also get Gemini. So you get 50% of the stock of those three companies. It would come into the sovereign wealth fund. and then from there, you know, we would collect dividends and gains on on that sovereign wealth fund and like I said, could use it for welfare purposes. He doesn't pledge it to anything in particular, but I think again, the idea is that we might n have a lot of welfare spending needs in the short term, the if people are getting reallocated due to the introduction of AI. And in the long term, if AI, you know, ends up pulling a large share of the national income each year, right? So essentially capital share goes up and it's because so many people are just paying AI instead of, you know, workers or whatever. If that happens, and I'm not sure it it will, then we would have a long term stake in in those revenues. So that's Fran Quigley: Right. Matt Bruenig: the the idea. Fran Quigley: And so it's the goal would be twofold. One, if I'm understanding this correctly, is one is to have a a role in the control of this incredibly transformative technology, right? So the the fifty percent stake would not be something that the government would turn around and just sell for for for pure you know profit and and dollars. It would actually maintain that that that level of ownership and and therefore control. Is that right? Matt Bruenig: Right, yes, yeah. I didn't I didn't mention that. I was mentioned the distributive aspects of it, which I guess what I tend to focus on. But yes, I Fran Quigley: Yeah. Matt Bruenig: think, you know, hey, if this is a fast moving industry and we see like things are moving quickly, regulation may may be difficult to pull off. It takes a long time to regulate things. the rulemaking process, you know how it goes. You're a law professor. So, you Fran Quigley: Yeah. Matt Bruenig: know, it can take it could take a while. So we may not have time to do that. By the time we get out a set of regulations, it may be too too late. things have already pushed past it. So if you need a quicker way to exert certain kind of fine-tuned control over what is happening, a fifty percent ownership stake would would would allow you to do that. Fran Quigley: Yeah. And and part of the the justification for doing so, and and Sanders writes about this in a New York Times op ed that we'll that we'll link to, is that AI is not something that you know, some incredibly brilliant software engineer just, you know, came up and and that's that's where the value comes from. The value comes from us, right? That we have we the people collectively have have written things, we've we've given speeches, people have written songs, there's been scientific research, etc. And that's all being I would say poured into AI, but I think that's the wrong direction. I think it's being pulled into AI by the AI companies. So that we the people are are the essentially the the source of this wonderful technology and therefore that we the people should have a a right to its benefits, not to mention the control. Is that is that am I saying that right? Matt Bruenig: Yeah, that's one of the moves, you know. I mean, when you're thinking about distributive justice as like a philosophical perspective, you Fran Quigley: Mm-hmm. Matt Bruenig: know, who who should get what and why and how does that work? You know, and I I see you have to deal with this with with whether you're talking about the poor or the wealth of the very rich or even the differences between different positions in society from, you know, the cashier versus the manager and th these kinds of things. How how do we determine, you know? what is right, like who who should get what and how much. And, you know, we have a we have mechanisms in place, right? markets and laws and whatever, but but from a sort of philosophical perspective. How do we know what each person deserves? And, you know, there's different views on it, utilitarian views and, you know, deontological views, whatever. But one very common intuition people have, personally not one that I have, but that is very common and probably the dominant intuition. That people have when it comes to that is that what what you receive, what you deserve to receive, should be commensurate essentially to what you contribute, what you know, what what part you put into it. And that obviously is very tricky to figure out how much did I put into it versus how much did you put into it. We're all in these complex chains involving thousands and thousands of people. but if you take that general intuition, it becomes AI is a very interesting technology in that in a very literal sense the models are trained on the entire corpus of human meaning making throughout like the whole history of the world. and some of this is quite literal. I know Anthropic had a had a lawsuit recently that I think they settled where they had basically just kind of stolen, I guess I IP infringed like All the books, basically. they like torrent them. Fran Quigley: I think technically I'm you're probably one of the plaintiffs. I think technically I'm one of the plaintiffs, right? I think that we're in that class. Yeah. Yeah. Matt Bruenig: Did you get some I know s I know quite a few people who did. I have not actually written a a book, but but I think this this was specific to like a a library of books. Apparently that you can go torrent like every ebook that's ever been published or something and they they did that to help train their model, which is illegal. And so people are getting checks now. But like that's a specific instance of it, but it's just true generally, right? Clearly they have a lot of my stu all my stuff I've ever written has been scraped from the web and Fran Quigley: Yeah. Matt Bruenig: and it's it goes beyond that too. Maybe it's not something you've written, but even just language, you know, like the English language, everything that's developed, it all happens in a very collective social way, like meaning no no individual can make meaning alone. You know, it just that's not how communication works. So You have a very funny place where it's not just that you'd say, hey, cause you could say this as well. You could say also just the technology is, as they would say, standing on the shoulder of giants, right? Fran Quigley: Mm-hmm. Matt Bruenig: Like what do what else is in this? You've got computers and electricity and math. And I mean, you could run it all the way back to the beginning and be like, you added a little bit on top of thousands and thousands of innovations that you didn't produce. but here we also have the input. of the model is literally what we all put out there. So if you do have that kind of dessertist intuition, then you do have a unique argument here to say, well, you owe us. Like if it weren't for us, you clearly wouldn't be able to do this. So it doesn't Fran Quigley: Yeah. Matt Bruenig: make sense that you should just grab all the money. Fran Quigley: Yeah. Well and and when you talk about the money, you know, obviously we don't know, but I believe it was from your analysis or or maybe I've got it from someone else's that that that maybe this could be initially like a trillion dollars worth of stock if it's fifty percent from these three company or two companies and one to be named or to be created later. it's Matt Bruenig: Yeah, if you do you know, the yeah, that I think I may have tweeted that or maybe it was in my piece as well. But yeah, if you, you know, you can go quickly look up what their current valuation is based on their last funding rounds and get a market cap from there and take fifty percent of it. And yeah, it's it's in excess of a trillion. currently Gemini is a little bit unclear because it exists inside of Google and Alphabet, Fran Quigley: Mm-hmm. Matt Bruenig: but but yeah, I think clearly at right now they're collected market caps over two trillion. Fran Quigley: Wow. And that you know, the old saying you a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there starts to add up. I think the same goes for a trillion dollars, right? in Matt Bruenig: Yeah. Yeah, no, I I was the I ca I the 'cause you see obviously you see naysayers and stuff on there and some of them come from the left and it's sort of like, Well, this won't solve this, this won't solve that and that's what drove me to be like, Well, okay, but a trillion dollars you know Fran Quigley: Yeah, that's right. Matt Bruenig: I'd rather be trying to solve that with a trillion dollars than to not have a trillion dollars. So Fran Quigley: Right. And and then yeah, until and unless we have a radically different system right now, what is it? Something like the top ten percent of Americans own like ninety plus percent of the stock and and I think I'm quoting from you, this wealth begets wealth. I mean these the people who own the who who who own these resources and and and now if are are making so much money and now we're cutting in the the larger public into the into the winnings, right? Matt Bruenig: Yeah, no, those facts are yeah, it's 90% yeah, that those are correct from the survey of consumer finances. And yes, I mean this this is why wealth concentrates, one of the reasons why wealth concentrates over time. Like you could you can do this in a computer model, really simple. And people have done little toy computer models where they will create these sort of like hypothetical societies. And if you just give some people a little bit extra at first and then you run it out over time. Just due to the way that compound returns work and the ability to have a higher savings rate if you have a higher income. Like if you just take those two variables, you'll wind up with what they call Pareto distribution most of the time, which is like at least like the top 20% will own at least 80% of the wealth. And you Fran Quigley: Mm. Matt Bruenig: just see that mirrored over and over again. And it's not even a, you know, almost you almost want to be like there's some evil guy behind all of this. And it's it's like, well, this is just how. rates of return and savings rates work. Well, which was that was Piketty's point in Capital of Twenty First Century, right? So Fran Quigley: Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of one evil guy behind it, not evil, but I do wanna this I'm asking you about the the the Sanders proposal and the fact that you had proposed something much broader and more sweeping and frankly, you know, very detailed years ago. you and it's not full disclosure, I think it's full credit. You you did have a role in helping craft the Sanders proposal, right? Matt Bruenig: Correct, yeah. yeah, I consulted with with their policy team on on it and you might even notice in his op ed there's a lot in there. He mentions Norway, he mentions Alaska, Fran Quigley: Mm yeah. Matt Bruenig: you know, so yeah, I think the fingerprints are are on the public output as well. I don't think I don't think it's at all mysterious, where where a lot of those ideas came from. So Fran Quigley: Yeah, that's great. No, no, it definitely sounded familiar. And I thought it was interesting in your op ed that you that that certainly I think that's the name of the actual legislation or or certainly his his discussion has talked about it being a sovereign wealth fund is but as you said, maybe quibbling, but I don't think it is quibbling. Is it actually in this is actually a state owned enterprise, which is a I think a really important thing for folks to realize because I think maybe in the US we think they don't exist in the United States or that they're a a crazy radical idea that doesn't that that is unheard of, but but as you've pointed out, Tennessee Valley Authority, Post Office, Amtrak, etcetera already US and there's a fair number of publicly owned utilities across the country too, right? Matt Bruenig: Yeah, actually I think technically by headcount, the majority of utilities in the US are publicly owned. But that's counting all the little rural that's where you get a lot of the public ownership, which is kind of curious in its own way. The more rural you you are, the more public ownership and like consumer co ops you find. Fran Quigley: interesting. Matt Bruenig: because I think I mean, you know, speculatively it's because it's harder to get kind of like Fran Quigley: Mm-mm. Matt Bruenig: capital investment and and enough to like lead to competition, you know. So if you're w you know Fran Quigley: Interesting. So the rural rural red counties are actually really historically red counties, right? So Matt Bruenig: Yeah, no. I mean like the a a good example of this is you know, Mam Dani announced this sort of like five public grocery stores kind of thing, you know, and it was a big deal and everyone whatever. And then you go look at it and there are publicly owned grocery stores in the US. There's I don't know, like ten of or something. And they're all in like conservative rural counties where They can't get a normal commercial operator to run a grocery store for one reason or another. And so they just, well, we'll just have the town, you know, run one. so you see that a lot in rural areas. and and also a lot of co-ops in rural areas for the same reason. And it's yeah, I always it's always curious. And I one of the things I think is interesting about it is I don't know that public ownership. per se is something that people really that really, I don't know, galvanizes our politics. There's a lot of heat around the welfare state and people Fran Quigley: Mm-hmm. Matt Bruenig: receiving handouts that they shouldn't receive and all that kind of a lot of heat, a lot of friction around that. But the public ownership itself is not really a big issue, you know? Fran Quigley: Mm. Matt Bruenig: it doesn't really come up that much. like for instance, well, why don't the Republicans run on privatizing the Postal Service or privatizing the TVA or or whatever? You know, in some states they run on like vouchers so that you could go to a private school, but they usually don't advocate for privatizing existing public schools, you know. So there's a it's interesting. I I'd I feel like we're much more our politics on the economic side is much more oriented around taxes and welfare than it is public ownership per se. Fran Quigley: interesting. Yeah, I've only seen just a little bit of rumblings from the right about you know, Trump, you know, so my goodness, the Trump administration is is getting more involved in state ownership, right? Matt Bruenig: Yeah, they've got he's built his himself a little portfolio of whatever it is. I think it's maybe it's up over twelve companies now, stocks in Intel, golden share in US steel. This is all it's it's very it's very like France under Mitterrand kind of thing, you know? Like even the golden share, it's like that's like a European thing, you know, and the and he's he's he's doing it here and Yeah, you know, you'll the Cato Institute might put something out about how they're not happy about it, but I mean, would you say in our politics this is driving anything? Midterms, discord no one no one cares really. Fran Quigley: Yeah. Well, and I think you you pointed out in your piece about the Sanders the reaction to the Sanders proposal that that Trump, ironically enough, with his state owned enterprises, he's he's prevented there to be what, I think a sh plant shutdown, US steel plant shutdown. He's stopped and stopped layoffs at the TVA, etcetera. You know, he's behaved very much like a a socialist in these respects. Matt Bruenig: Yeah, no, his 'cause this is an objection you'll get, right? Is to say, Well look, with these state owned enterprises and social wealth funds, like occasionally whether you're conservative or or liberal or whatever, you're gonna the other guy is gonna run it. You know, the other the other party is gonna run it and if you don't really trust her like that party, like that's a little concerning. And it's I mean, I get it, but Let's look at it. You know, I think from for most liberals, Trump is kind of the worst case scenario. And it's you know what I mean, you look at it and you go, That's fine. you know, I don't know. You cla you stop some layoffs and plant closures. It's I don't know, it's not really a huge deal. so Fran Quigley: Right. And and if we believe in representative democracy and there'll be a job interview evaluation every two years or four years or six years, hopefully that'll that'll bring accountability, right? Matt Bruenig: Yeah, it's hey, it's a democracy, so if the if the other side wins then you gotta give a shot to to do something. Fran Quigley: Yeah. I wanna be c careful about your time here, but did the your piece, as folks will see when they read it, is is the the framing of it is here are the objections that have been made to Sanders A AI proposal and here are the responses to the objections. overall, like you say, state owned enterprises isn't something that that that sends people to the streets and concern. AI there is a huge amount of concern. I mean, d do you have a feel for what kind of response the Sanders proposal has received so far? Matt Bruenig: you know, I've been following it certainly. you know, one of the interesting things is Sam Altman before he, you know, kind of blew up as he was like a blogger as well. Not not that wasn't his only thing, but he he blogged in addition to whatever else he was doing at Y Combinator and whatever. And so he he seemed for a long time to be pretty sympathetic to the idea of, you know, 'cause he had all these AI fantasies about where we were going. And so he was thinking big thoughts about universal basic income and so he he would have already been familiar with Alaska and and the Open AI Foundation, which puts out stuff like this. They had put out stuff that mentioned Alaska and Norway. I always think, you know, I feel like you guys are reading actually I know for a fact the OpenAI people were reading some of my stuff because they invited me to some kind of conference that I didn't go to. But so yeah, I don't know. It could all just be downstream of me, you know? I am not but Fran Quigley: Mm yeah, there you go. Matt Bruenig: That's a little grandiose, obviously. Other people have thought of these things. But sometimes you see little tells when you're like, that's sort of that's my framing. so but Fran Quigley: Yeah, that's great. Matt Bruenig: but but so he seemed positive about it. And then, you know, there was some talk about maybe they would give up open AI would give up five percent, you know, sort of Fran Quigley: I'm sold that again. Matt Bruenig: in the same vein that Intel did to like a Trumpy thing. But then recently apparently this was reported by Jeff Stein. he was in some kind of closed door meetings with congressional Republicans and he said some kind of gobbledygook about, yeah, we want to give equity, but not to the government, but to like it just in sort of like not Fran Quigley: Ow. Matt Bruenig: nonsensical, so I don't know where he is currently. Fran Quigley: So five percent is not their opening offer, right? And then in the it's not what I feel I've seen the five percent discussion before too. I didn't know he'd stepped away from that a little Matt Bruenig: Yeah, I think now but it you know, who knows? It's sort of like does he have views? reportedly, you know, th the w when people try to figure out this his character, he's kind of a two faced kind of guy, you know, he's kind of a dishonest figure. This is just from what I you know, like New York magazine and the other profiles of him. So Fran Quigley: Yeah, I've read the same, yeah, your profiles, yeah. Matt Bruenig: who knows what he really thinks. But it seems like in that setting where you have Congressional Republicans who were, you know, not happy with all this talk of state ownership, he He seemed to have backpedal, but not but in a way where you he has like deniability, where he's like, I'm not backpedaling, of course, yes, but I mean state ownership but not by the state and and it's just like, you know, okay. So Fran Quigley: Well, Matt, I've taken a huge amount of your time and I wanna say to I would sign up for a multi, multi hour, multi week Matt Bruning seminar. So if you do that for you know, some some law school somewhere, and if they do it if they if they allow folks to observe online, I'm signing me up. So but I wanna respect your time. Is there anything we that you think folks should know about the Sanders proposal in particular that we didn't talk about? Matt Bruenig: no, I think I think you got it. yeah, you know, we can read the couple pieces about it, but it's pretty it's pretty basic. and you know, it doesn't seem like it's gonna happen, but I think it's a good idea and a way to throw something out there that is constructive, you know, as opposed to just kind of I don't know, kind of hysterical or just just saying no to everything, right? Maybe there's a path forward where we if this is a I use it all the time. So I'll just say like this is a very productivity enhancing technology for me. And I can't imagine that I'm alone in that. And so Fran Quigley: Mm-hmm. Correct. Matt Bruenig: if we can get more productivity and we can share the gains, that's that's like a that seems like a very positive path. And so I hope we think more about how to share the gains from productivity enhancing technology and less about you know, for or against based on the idea that the only way to have new technology is within the existing system and then just analyze it like well what would the distributive effects be if the current rules stayed exactly like they are. I think that's not very imaginative or creative and can generate, you know, non-optimal outcomes. Fran Quigley: Right. Well, and I I d I appreciate you saying this isn't gonna pass tomorrow, but I will say your your original white paper and people's policy project I want to say is twenty eighteen, right? Something like that. And now Matt Bruenig: Yeah. Fran Quigley: we're talking twenty twenty six and we've got sen a senator proposing the legislation discussed as an op-ed in the Times. Your response. By the way, your response is was published in Jacobin, but that if that's behind a paywall for folks, I'm never clear what is and what isn't there. 'cause I'm a subscriber. Yes, what I wanted to say. Yeah. Okay. We'll Matt Bruenig: It's it's on People's Policy Project as well. They they just yeah. Yeah. Fran Quigley: put it we'll put the link to your actual website where it is free for folks to engage in this discussion. And I would definitely encourage folks to to sign up for the People's Policy Project email list. Follow Matt on Twitter slash X, right? That's is that your main form of social media? Okay. Matt Bruenig: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Fran Quigley: Where you'll see a picture of what John Rawls is your is your profile picture. Is that right? So Matt Bruenig: Yes. Scowling John Rawls, yeah. Fran Quigley: That tells you something right there. So anyway, thank you, Matt, for joining us. really appreciate your time and hopefully we can get you back in sometime. I would love to do a deeper dive on the Nordic models, for instance. And I know you've you all have written so much about that in in the housing context as well, right? and so housing, childcare, et cetera. We'd we'd love to talk more about that someday. All Matt Bruenig: Great. Thanks for having me. Fran Quigley: right. And thank you all for listening. And please remember this is a good example we've just heard today. You know, we can do better.